So that if those twelve dukes of Edom; if Abraham and the nine kings his neighbours; if Jacob and Esau, and the thirty-one kings in Canaan, the seventy-two kings mutilated by Adonibeseck, the thirty-two kings that came to Benhadad, the seventy kings of Greece making war at Troy: were, as our author contends, all of them sovereign princes; it is evident that kings derived their power from some other original than fatherhood, since some of these had power over more than their own posterity; and it is demonstration, they could not be all heirs to Adam: for I challenge any man to make any pretence to power by right of fatherhood either intelligible or possible in anyone, otherwise, than either as Adam’s heir, or as progenitor over his own descendents, naturally sprung from him. And if our author could show that any one of these princes, of which he gives us here so large a catalogue, had his authority by either of these titles, I think I might yield him the cause; though it is manifest they are all impertinent, and directly contrary to what he brings them to prove,

viz. “That the lordship which Adam had over the world by right descended to the patriarchs.”